A couple of years ago tech executives at FICO wanted to update their infrastructure. “OpenStack seems to be the wave of the future, so we gave it a run,” says Donald Talton, senior manager of platform operations and cloud engineering at the credit rating agency.

SolidFire

Donald Talton

FICO considered using VMware, but felt that the “momentum” of OpenStack was stronger, Talton says. And so began FICO’s use of OpenStack’s IaaS open source private cloud software. Talton says it’s been great, though that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.

OpenStack officials will be the first to admit that the open source cloud project is still maturing. “We’ve done a good job delivering a robust set of infrastructure services, now we need to make sure it’s a really great experience, not only for the cloud operators, but for the end users, too,” says OpenStack Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce. A survey of OpenStack users found that complexity of deploying and managing OpenStack clouds continues to be a pain point.